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Pansy
To my dearest granddaughter, Pansy, I leave my cottage in the forest, along with all its contents, in the hope that it might provide you with the adventure you’ve been searching for.
LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF ANGELICA UNDERBURROW
The problem with mushrooms, Pansy decided, half-squatting in the damp forest earth, was that far too many of them looked alike. Take the crop of orange fungus blanketing one side of the fallen log before her, for example. Was it the delicious, yet rare, Phoenix Tail mushroom she’d spent mostof the morning searching the forest for? Or was it the far more ominously named Bloodletter Shroom? Gods only knew the answer to that one. Because Pansy certainly didn’t; not even with a borrowed copy ofFatleaf’s Fungal Fanciesclutched in one dirt-stained hand.
At this point, a more prudent halfling would have backed away and left the mushrooms to carry on as they were, undisturbed. But the thought of leaving behind what could be the greatest culinary treasure this side of Giant’s Reach made something inside Pansy shrivel. Not to mention she would be coming home empty-handed – on tonight of all nights.
No. Pansy shook her head. She couldn’t do that. Shewouldn’t.
Blowing out a breath, she tucked a stray ringlet of copper-colored hair behind one large, rounded ear and squinted closer at the finger-like frills jutting up from the log’s mossy surface. Well, it was certainly orange. But was it the “burnished orange of a warm hearth”, as Elwan Fatleaf had put it? Maybe. Though how that differed from the “dull orange of an overripe pumpkin” Pansy wasn’t quite sure.
Perhaps her friend Blossom would know. She was a florist by trade, so mushrooms weren’t precisely her area of expertise. But itwasher book that Pansy had borrowed. And if Blossom couldn’t give her a firm answer – well, Pansy would throw out the mushrooms and come up with something else. Better to be safe than sorry, especially when the alternative meant potentially poisoning your entire family.
“The things I do for a good quiche,” she muttered, retrieving a small paring knife from the folds of her apron. There were probably blades better suited for this: foraging knives or some such. But like most halflings, until today, the closest Pansy had gotten to foraging was visiting the local grocer, who did not dealin anything other than the very ordinary. And Phoenix Tails were anything but.
Even with only a paring knife at her disposal, the mushrooms came away without much fuss. Soon, Pansy was rising to her feet, her potentially-poisonous-but-hopefully-not haul tucked safely inside her wicker shopping basket.
As much as she would have liked to keep searching – just in case – the hour was getting late. The sky overhead, glimpsed in narrow snatches through a wild, thick canopy, had already deepened to a soft lilac, edged in equally delicate pinks and golds that continued to thin as daylight waned. Pansy estimated that she had a couple of hours before night set in. Plenty of time to walk the winding trail back to Haverow –ifshe left now.
As luck would have it, she managed only a few steps in the direction of home before a new treasure caught her eye: a truffle, white and plump, rising just above the carpet of dead leaves blanketing the forest floor. Had some animal unearthed it, only to abandon their plunder in a moment of panic?
“Huh. Well, you won’t find me complaining,” Pansy said, hopping off the path once more.
It took a little bit of maneuvering on her part, the ground here more gnarled roots than dirt, but soon she reached the shallow divot in the earth the truffle called home. The white bulb was enormous, nearly the size of her fist. With it, she could make enough truffle butter to fuel dozens of recipes, from truffle-butter mashed potatoes to a wonderfully soft white truffle-butter bread she’d always wanted to try. None would be as extraordinary as the Phoenix Tail quiche she’d been hoping to prepare, but the truffle butter, at least, she could leave behind. It would be a piece of her heart for her parents to keep close, areminder that her love for them could never diminish, no matter how much distance might come between them.
Warmth bloomed beneath Pansy’s breastbone at the thought. Perhaps tonight would not be such a disaster after all – even if the mushrooms in the basketdidturn out to be poisonous doppelgangers.
Squatting down anew, Pansy reached for the truffle. However, before her fingers could so much as graze its pockmarked surface, a pink blur darted out in front of her, and the truffle was gone.
“Thief!” she cried, watching as a conspicuously well-fed pig made off with her would-be prize. “Piggy thief! Bring that back!”
Her demands fell on deaf ears. But Pansy would not give up so easily.
She surged to her feet, dress hiked pre-emptively around her knees. No need to give herself any more things to trip over; the forest already had her covered on that front. Still, even with a sea of uneven terrain before her, Pansy managed to keep pace with the pilfering swine. In fact, soon she wasgainingon the creature.
“I’ve got you now!” she shouted, legs pumping harder still.
Pansy’s vision had condensed, leaving nothing but the rotund, pink mass ahead of her – plus, the truffle clamped between its jaws. When the pig released the truffle in apparent concession, she gave no thought to what might be around her. She dove.
No sooner had her fingers closed around the squat bulb than another set of fingers, longer and greener than her own, found hers, pressing nails like flat shards of obsidian into soft, unguarded skin.
For half a breath, hazel eyes met yellow in complete and perfect stillness, where even the world itself seemed to pauseon its axis. Then, the moment passed, and both Pansy and the unexpected interloper broke apart, each relinquishing their hold on the truffle in favor of scrambling back several paces (and, in Pansy’s case, letting out a less-than-dignified squeak).
A goblin? Here?Pansy hugged her basket close, heart kicking hard against her ribs.
In truth, this shouldn’t have been such a shock. Just as the forest bordered Haverow and several other halfling villages on one side, it abutted a vast network of caves on the other, all inhabited – or “infested”, as the neighboring dwarves might say – by goblins. No doubt this was one of them, having temporarily abandoned the dank, festering darkness they loved so much to – what? Scavenge? Steal? That’s what goblins did. Provided they weren’t too busy slaughtering halflings in the name of whatever dark lord or necromancer they volunteered to serve.
This goblin, at least, seemed to be unarmed. Granted, the claws they sported at the end of each finger could do some damage with the right application; the tiny, pink pinpricks dotting the back of Pansy’s hand were proof enough of that. But even those claws seemed to have diminished slightly, as if they’d been retracted. Like a cat’s.
Still, it was difficult to know anything for sure. While Pansy had stumbled backwards in a straight line, the goblin had taken a more strategic approach, seeking cover behind the same knot of overgrown roots they had popped out from. If Pansy squinted, she could just make them out. But in the ever-waning daylight, who knew how long that would last.
In many ways, the goblin appeared exactly as Pansy had imagined: dark green hair; green skin; clothes in varying shades of brown and gray, all held together by scraps of fabric and aprayer. And yet, their features were also softer, rounder, even when doused in the gnarled, twisting shadows of the forest. With sharp cheekbones and an intense, lash-lined gaze, the goblin was almost –dare Pansy say it?– cute.
To think, she had an entire bookshelf’s worth of Wolf Banefoot books at home, and none of them had prepared her for this. But she could hardly expect stories about the greatest halfling hero to wax poetic about the very goblins he was fighting.
